In this volume, Bertelli (ISI Florence Italian literature professor from 2011 to 2014) analyzes four Italian twentieth-century novels (“Se una Notte d’Inverno un Viaggiatore”, “Petrolio”, “Il Capitano di Lungo Corso”, “L’Odore del Sangue”) and Bartolo Cattafi’s unpublished diaries. In the five chapters of his book Professor Bertelli discusses some of the major features of structuralist literary criticism (especially in the 60s and the 70s) on the one hand and reception theory on the other. In doing so, he offers an original interpretation of the limits of writing in relation to the writer’s life. In other words, to what extent do they influence one another? How does the intrinsic incompleteness of the writing process compare to the book’s printed version? Bertelli tries to provide an answer through the interpretation of the writing process as something that is, first of all, the experience of human limits, with death as its most obvious example.